Vatican officials very concerned about influence of freemasonry

FEB 3RD 2017BY DEACON NICK DONNELLY HOLY SEE

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Dr. Robert Moynihan, the founder and editor of Inside the Vatican, reports that over the past couple of months Vatican officials have increasingly expressed concerns to him about the influence of freemasonry:

Moreover, during the past several months, quietly and privately on most occasions, but sometimes publicly, a word has been whispered and spoken aloud in Rome in a way unlike any other time in the 33 years that I have been writing about Vatican affairs. That word is freemasonry.

Dr. Moynihan made his observations in the context of Pope Francis’s enigmatic instruction to Cardinal Burke to clean out the influence of freemasonry from the Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta.

Dr. Moynihan goes on to report a conversation with a retired Vatican official who expressed concerns that freemasonry has become the dominant worldview of ruling elites in the West:

“The fact is that the thought of freemasonry, which was the thought of the Enlightenment, believes Christ and his teachings, as taught by the Church, are an impediment to human freedom and self-fulfillment. And this thought has become dominant in the elites of the West, even when those elites are not officially members of any freemasonic lodge. It is a pervasive modern worldview.”

Dr. Moynihan concludes:

This bears repeating and emphasizing: in any particular case, it may not be so much actual membership in a masonic lodge that is involved, but rather adherence to principles of that “masonic thought” which views man in a “Promethean” way, that man should “steal fire from heaven,” wrest it from the gods for the benefit of men, seek ever greater knowledge (computers, the genetic code, transhumanism, Homo Sapiens Version 2.0, “better” than the species currently is), not accepting any limit to the human ambitions to “be like gods.”

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It has been reported that during a meeting between Pope Francis and Cardinal Burke in November about the scandal of the Knights of Malta distributing condoms and oral contraceptives in Africa, the Holy Father instructed Cardinal Burke to “clean out” Freemasonry from the order. The Holy Father gave this order to Cardinal Burke in his role as patron of the Knights of Malta by papal appointment.

The Vatican journalist Edward Pentin revealed details of Pope Francis’s concerns about the influence of the Freemasons on the Knights of Malta:

Hopes that the contraceptive scandal would be addressed came on Nov. 10, when Cardinal Burke was received in private audience by Pope Francis. During that meeting, the Register has learned, the Pope was “deeply disturbed” by what the cardinal told him about the contraceptive distribution. The Pope also made it clear to Cardinal Burke that he wanted Freemasonry “cleaned out” from the order, and he demanded appropriate action. The concern was followed up by a Dec. 1 letter to Cardinal Burke, in which the Register has learned that the Holy Father underlined the cardinal’s constitutional duty to promote the spiritual interests of the order and remove any affiliation with groups or practices that run contrary to the moral law.

Pope Francis has previously criticized the destructive influence of the Freemasons and their hostility towards the Church. During his address to young people during his apostolic visit to Turin the Holy Father spoke about “Masonic, hardcore anticlericals and Satanists”:

At the end of the 19th century there were the worst conditions for young people’s development: freemasonry was in full swing, not even the Church could do anything, there were priest haters, there were also Satanists…. It was one of the worst moments and one of the worst places in the history of Italy. However, if you would like to do a nice homework assignment, go and find out how many men and women saints were born during that time. Why? Because they realized that they had to go against the tide with respect to the culture, to that lifestyle.

It was during his in-flight press interview in July 2013 that Pope Francis first expressed his concerns about the influence of Freemasons on the Church:

“The problem is not having this [homosexual] orientation. No, we must be brothers and sisters. The problem is lobbying for this orientation, or lobbies of greed, political lobbies, Masonic lobbies, so many lobbies. This is the most serious problem for me.”

2017 marks the 300th anniversary of the foundation of Freemasonry with the foundation of the Grand Lodge in London in 1717. It may be wise for the Church to mark this anniversary by again warning the faithful about the danger freemasonry poses not only to the Church but to humanity.